Session 5: Major Whole Word Contractions

There are five major whole-word contractions that involve frequently used words:

and

for

of

the

with

These contractions are important for two reasons, the first being the frequency of their use. The second comes from Rule 2B: "The contractions and, for, of, the, and with are used in preference to any other contractions unless more space would be used".

One of the biggest rules of these five contractions is that whenever two or more of them appear in sequence, there is no space left between these contractions. This also includes the letter "a". For example, in the sentence -- "Bob and the kids went for a ride." -- we have no space between the contractions "and" and "the", and between the words "for" and "a":

If, however, the words "and" and "the" in the sentence above overlapped two lines, and the break allowed "and" to be on one line and "the" on the second line, that is the practice that should be followed:

These five major contractions should not be written together if any punctuation or composition sign comes between them. For example, in the sentence:

Kim and I just read THE CALL OF THE WILD.

the composition signs, in this case the double capital sign, negate the use of writing these contractions together.

If the first word of a pair of these contractions is capitalized, the second contraction can follow the first without a space.

Finally, as you might have noticed above, even though we only have one cell contractions here, we must use the double capital sign if the whole word is capitalized.